Calculator · 2026 and 2027 coverage years · 51 states
ACA Subsidy Cliff Headroom Calculator — 2026 and 2027
Find how far your income is from the ACA subsidy cliff, what crossing it costs, and whether your state backfills above 400%.
Try:
Where do these numbers come from?
The poverty guidelines are from the HHS table for each year. The applicable percentages are from the IRS revenue procedure for each coverage year. The state assistance data is from each state's own marketplace or insurance department page. Every number links back to the record that states it, which quotes the line from the source page.
How do you know it's right?
Each value is checked against the source page it was read from: the number must appear in the sentence we quote, and that sentence must appear on the page. The sums run in your browser and are written out in full under the answer, so you can follow every step. More on how that works.
What does this not tell you?
What your premium will be — that depends on your ZIP code, age, and which plan you pick, and KFF and HealthCare.gov do it well. This answers the threshold question: which band you are in, how far the edge is, what your state adds, and how much you can contribute to a deductible account to get under the line.
About the subsidy cliff
The enhanced premium tax credits created by the American Rescue Plan Act and extended by the Inflation Reduction Act lapsed on 31 December 2025. For coverage years 2026 and 2027, a household above 400% of the federal poverty line receives no premium tax credit at all — one dollar over the line costs the entire credit. Some states have stood up their own programmes to soften or eliminate that cliff: New Mexico backfills the full loss including above 400%; New Jersey runs to 600%; Maryland covers the loss below 200% and partly to 400%. Whether the cliff bites depends on the state, and no single page states the answer for all fifty-one. See every state's programme.